Steam Chariot

The Chariot act as a leader, a support unit and a Healer for the suits. The chariot provide the steam power to the suit, the power being transferred by tubes.

Leader role: As a "center" to follow (since the Steamsuits are all attached to the Chariot by the tubes), the one who drive the Steam Chariot act as a leader for the group in deciding where to go and who gets an Overdrive.

Support Unit: The Chainguns on the Chariot might not be really powerful, they are nevertheless very useful against hordes of enemies, you can slow a lot of opponents while the suits are dealing with a few others, and the role of the Overdrive as a support function will soon reveal essential for the players.

Healer: No suit can "die" in the game. If a suit is put out of combat, it is reeled in and in the Chariot it is repaired. Any suit that goes back inside the Chariot is repaired to full "health" after a while.

[Note: Design of the chariot will have a lot of influence on the style of the game. The chariot has obviously to be big enough to contain the four suits at the same time, but on the other hand, the chariot must not take a lot screen space, so it is possible that we will have to adopt a more cartoony style, allowing us to put all the suits in a chariot that is obviously not big enough to contain all of them.]

Chaingun: The Chaingun is a rifle with a high rate of fire. Although the bullet are of small caliber, the sheer number of them can slow down even the most armored enemy around. The chariot is equipped with three other mini-chainguns to be used by the other crew members when they’re inside it.

Overdrive: The main use for the Chariot. The chariot always target a suit the minute a driver is inside (the targeted suit can be toggled using the left trigger). When pressing the “B” button, the chariot directs more steam to the targeted suit, giving it more power, at the expense of the other suits. [Note: The overdrive mechanics have to be tought of. Different solutions are to be considered:
1-The Overdrive is recharging at a certain speed. For example, the Overdrive is fully recharged and can be used again 30 seconds after the last use. Maybe this could be influenced by the number of suits active at the same time (suits fighting outside the chariot.). The less suits are fighting outside, the faster the Overdrive is charging, thus giving the hard choice of leaving a suit alone to defend the chariot to charge the Overdrive faster.

2-The Overdrive is charged with bonuses called: Supercoal Charge. These can be stacked and used later. The Chariot could already have some shots stocked at the beginning of a level.

3-The Overdrive charge itself by the suits doing a special action (non-offensive action). This could be called a Pumping Charge. When a suit has some time, the player, by doing a combo of buttons on the controller (example: Do a left-right move while pressing A), charge the Overdrive a little, so after say, 10 Pumping Charges, the Overdrive could be used. This give a more active role to the players. The driver of the Chariot could even Pump himself (or maybe he’s the only one able to, giving him a more active role in the team). Imagine a Boss fight were the players are yelling to the driver to Pump faster to get that essential Overdrive to shoot a missile in the breached armor of the tripod!

Railgun throwing: If the targeted suit is in the chariot, it will be thrown using the top catapult instead of being put on overdrive. Throwing a suit can be useful to pull a lever out of reach, or attain an enemy out of reach and resistant to ranged weapons.

Reel in: If the targeted suit is captured by an enemy or have felt into a hole or ravine, by holding the “B” button, the chariot should be able to “reel in” the suit to safety using the tube linking the suit to the chariot as a cable.

Armor Strength: None